Description

Hex: The Full Story is for anyone - hobbyist, professional, student, teacher - who enjoys board games, game theory, discrete math, computing, or history. hex was discovered twice, in 1942 by Piet Hein and again in 1949 by John F. nash. How did this happen? Who created the puzzle for Hein's Danish newspaper column? How are Martin Gardner, David Gale, Claude Shannon, and Claude Berge involved? What is the secret to playing Hex well? The answers are inside…

Features

New documents on Hein's creation of Hex, the complete set of Danish puzzles, and the identity of their composer

Chapters on Gale's game Bridg-it, the game Rex, computer Hex, open Hex problems, and more

Dozens of new puzzles and solutions

Study guide for Hex players

Supplemenetary text for a course in game theory, discrete math, computer science, or science history

Reviews

Click here to see a review of the book, along with some Hex puzzles set by Oliver Roeder of FiveThirtyEight.

Table of Contents

Birth

Preparing to launch

Polygon in Politiken

The Polygon puzzlist

Rebirth

More games, and machines

Hex goes global

Is Hex easy?

Hex theory

Rex theory

The quest for strategies

The rise of the bots

Epilogue, Chronology

Appendix A: Politiken Polygon Puzzles

Appendix B: Unpublished Lindhard Puzzles

Appendix C: Henderson Hex Puzzles

Appendix D: Rex Puzzles

Appendix E: Open Problems

About the Authors

Ryan B. Hayward is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Alberta, Canada.

Bjarne Toft is Professor Emeritus at the Univeristy of Southern Denmark.